Against a Moral/Pacifist Reading of the Bible

Against a Moral/ Pacifist Against a Moral/ Pacifist Against a Moral/ Pacifist Against a Moral/ Pacifist Reading of the Bible Reading of the Bible Reading of the Bible Reading of the Bible

by John Tracy (from JesusRadicals.com forum)

For 1700 years mainstream Christianity has embraced first and foremost the Roman creeds (Nicene, Apostles') as the lens by which to perceive the Jesus of the New Testament and then, as people here have indicated, to use Jesus as a lens to perceive (or dismiss) the Old Testament. This is back to front. The old testament is the lens to understand Jesus, Jesus is the lens to understand the Roman empire. Everything Jesus mentions in the NT is referring to something in the OT. Jesus says he came to fulfill the old law. He announced his mission in Luke by reading from Isaiah when proclaiming he had come to heal the sick, free the prisoner, give sight to the blind and proclaim the jubilee year. The jubilee year itself is the zenith of Moses' law. In John 10 when Jesus confirms to the Jewish authorities that he is the messiah he does so in the context of the Hannakuh/dedication/festival of light ceremony at the Jerusalem temple. a ceremony that celebrates the successful guerilla war against the Greek empire. The meaning of "Messiah" in this context was clear to all in the temple. The name Jesus and Joshua are the same, Jesus was named after the man who lead Israel through war into the promised land. Joshua was not an invading colonial power. He was restoring the covenant of Abraham which was made not through invasion and conquest but by tithing to Malchezedec who, before Abraham, was the traditional owner of Israel, or at least around Jerusalem Jesus says over and over again that he is part of the OT tradition yet modern christendom and the creeds have severed him from this tradition. Those who look for pacifist wisdom in the bible will find disappointment and confusion. Those who look for an indiginist, anti-civilisation, anti-imperialist wisdom will find the bible overflows with insights. (including the restoration by Joshua) Regarding the question about sin and God's minimisation of it. It is the christendom tradition, not the bible, that has an obsessive focus on sin. The obsessive focus of the bible is on right relationship in the land of Abraham's covenant. The people of the covenant are repeatedly forgiven for their sins in a restoration process - Noah, Moses, David and Jesus. The emphasis is on restoration and elimination of sin through the reestablishment of right relationship, not on trying to contain it. What is clear is that the OT framework, the same framework that Jesus reclaimed from the Pharisees and Sadducees, does not consider violence in war to be evil. In fact even when the violence of enemy imperial armies is used against Israel this is described as the hand of god. Pacifists who ignorantly promote the prophesies of Isaiah and Micah (Swords into plowshares) do not seem to read the whole prophecy including the terrible violence that must occur before the time of peace can be established. The nature of sin is a big topic that I wont go into here except to remind people of the nature of original sin - according to Genesis it is the knowledge of good and evil itself. Paul tells us that it is the law itself that creates sin and through the abolition of (or transcendence over) the law we are made sinless. If we try to understand the bible through the lens of good and evil then we have departed from a biblical theology.

Instead of christians dismissing and re-interpreting what is clear and plain in the bible, they should be honest and accept that their own philosophy of good and evil has nothing to do with the bible. The "imperative" of Jesus was to love god and love each other. There was no moral judgement of good and evil. The paradigm of love (god is love) is the radical alternative to notions of good and evil. What is "clear and plain" is (for example) that Joshua was exalted for his military deeds, not condemned in the bible. A moral, good/evil analysis just does not fit, especially if you are a pacifist. I say, Jesus was a fulfillment of the Old Testament messianic tradition, at least that's what he said he was. There is no biblical basis whatsoever to support the suggestion that god flowed backwards in Israel. Only the lens of the Roman empire and its creeds can lead you to that conclusion. I say there is indeed a third way and this is exactly what Jesus taught and proclaimed. You cannot understand anything Jesus said about the old law or about his arguments with the Pharisees without understanding the paradox of the stories and the historical context of the Hasmonean dynasty (including Pharisees and Sadducees) collaboration with Caesar. Jesus does not dismiss the old law, he fulfills it, yet he defies the religious legalism and moralism of the temple. This is the third way. I am not saying the bible is a manifesto for violence as some militarist christians have done. All I am saying is that the bible has nothing to say about violence, the point of the stories is about something else. If we get obsessed about moral judgements of violence in bible stories we are distracted from what the story is really about. Jesus should not be interpreted through the lens of the state religion of the very empire that crucified Jesus, instead we should look at Jesus through the lens that he himself provided for us to understand him - the old testament. You cannot say that "love your enemy" is a pacifist imperative unless you can explain some pacifist meaning into "I have not come to bring peace but a sword". You must either cherry pick from the bible, embracing what appeals to you and declaring it "Imperative" and dismissing what you don't like or agree with. - or you must continue searching for a meaning that unites the two apparently contradictory passages. In short - love your enemies means love the gentile Samaritans. In the previous war of liberation, 200 years earlier, the gentiles in Israel and Judah were killed. The nationalism of both the Sanhedrin and of the revolutionary zealots relied on this hatred of the foreigner to build their own credibilities with the population. Jesus on the other hand says love your enemies, teaches and visits the samaritans and we are told in acts that the whole Samaritan people turned to God, that is they joined with the circumsised Hebrews, and this is the significance of the circumcision controversy throughout the NT - should the Samaritans do it? The parable of the good Samaritan has nothing to do with charity for the unfortunate but is about the question Jesus poses "Who is my brother?". The union of the Samaritans and circumcised Hebrews, apparently orchestrated by Jesus himself, seems to me to be a major factor in Israel achieving the strength and unity to overthrow the Romans in the 30 years following Jesus death. Previously, the gentile Samaritans were passively supportive of Caesar but after Jesus' mission were active supporters of the Hebrew people. The old law is primarily the covenant of Abraham which is the unity of God, the people and the land between the Euphrates, Nile and Jordan rivers. In this covenant there are no rules and regulations - only faith. It was the faithfulness, not the moral righteousness, of Abraham that brought the covenant into being.